Humor and Translation Mark Herman
[email protected] Graecum Est “Graecum est,” wrote medieval comments from viewers that supple- Greek. And, as has been mentioned in monks in Latin in the margins of Greek ment, and occasionally contradict, the this column previously, many Slavic texts they could not translate. “It was information given on the map itself. words for German, such as the Greek to me,” says Casca of Cicero’s For example, German speakers, not Russian немецкий, are related to speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, mentioned on the original map, are said words meaning “unable to communi- Act I, Scene 2. And, indeed, anything to call incomprehensibilities Spanish or cate,” such as неметь (to become incomprehensible to an English Chinese. The suggested reason for dumb), and are sometimes used as speaker can be “Greek.” So too, to a speakers of German and other pejoratives for anything foreign. Norwegian, Swedish, Persian, Spanish, European languages calling gobblede- But the ultimate put-down of a lan- or Portu guese speaker. Except that gook “Spanish” is that they once had to guage may be the claim that even Spanish and Portuguese speakers will contend with Spanish-speaking Habs- omniscient God cannot comprehend it. also call utterances they cannot under- burg rulers (Spanish was once the offi- That is why, say some Basques, they stand “Chi nese.” And “Greek” to a cial language of the Bavarian court). swear only in Spanish. And, supposedly Greek is of course not Greek, but And the Germanic languages have during the nineteenth century, some Chinese or Arabic.